State v. Crutcher

• Decision Date: 12 April 1999
• Parties: STATE of Tennessee, Appellant, v. Bobby CRUTCHER, Appellee.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 295

989 S.W.2d 295

STATE of Tennessee, Appellant, v. Bobby CRUTCHER, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Tennessee,

at Nashville.

April 12, 1999.

John Knox Walkup, Attorney General and Reporter, Michael E. Moore, Solicitor General, Karen M. Yacuzzo, Assistant Attorney General, for Appellant.

Bryce C. Ruth, Jr., White House, Tennessee, for Appellee.

OPINION

BARKER, J.

This is an appeal by the State of Tennessee from the judgment of the intermediate appellate court affirming the suppression of evidence in the trial court below. ¹ The sole issue is whether the warrantless police search of the appellee's motorcycle violated his rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution.

The State contends that the suppression of evidence was improper because the search in question was incident to a lawful arrest. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the appellee, Bobby Crutcher, was not under arrest at the time of the police search. Accordingly, we affirm both the trial court and the Court of Criminal Appeal's determination that the search was not incident to a lawful arrest. The evidence obtained from the search was properly suppressed.

BACKGROUND

On October 19, 1995, Officer Frank Moniz of the Gallatin Police Department observed three motorcyclists drive away from a traffic light at an excessive rate of speed. The officer activated his emergency flashing equipment and pulled over two of the speeding motorcyclists. However, the third motorcycle, driven by the appellee, accelerated even more in an attempt to flee from the pursuing officer. Officer Moniz gave chase to the appellee and the two vehicles reached speeds of one hundred (100) miles per hour. The officer radioed for assistance and eventually slowed his vehicle down upon entering a residential area.

As Officer Moniz crested a hill in his patrol car, he observed the appellee drive up an embankment and wreck into a storm drain. The appellee had been thrown approximately twenty feet away from his motorcycle and was crawling out of the roadside brush when the officer drove up to apprehend him. Officer Moniz testified that upon reaching the appellee, he placed one arm behind the appellee's back and intended to arrest him for reckless endangerment and evading arrest. ² However, when the appellee complained of injuries, Officer Moniz ceased handcuffing him and called for an ambulance.

Officer Moniz testified that he made no additional effort to arrest the appellee at the accident scene. While waiting for the ambulance, Officer Moniz and other police officers stayed with the appellee and made him lie still for his safety. The appellee questioned Officer Rich Evans about what was going to happen to him. Officer Evans told the appellee that he would be taken to a nearby hospital for medical treatment. The officers did not discuss criminal charges or arrest proceedings with the appellee and they did not give him a Miranda warning at the scene.

Officer Moniz testified that an ambulance arrived only minutes after he radioed for medical assistance. As the appellee was being loaded into the ambulance, his friend, Jeff Crook, asked if he could take control of the wrecked motorcycle. The appellee agreed and requested that Mr. Crook also take possession of the gold chains that the appellee had around his neck.

Officer Evans testified that he and the other officers agreed to let Mr. Crook remove the motorcycle from the scene. However, before releasing the bike, Officer Evans inventoried the contents of a backpack and jacket that were located on it. ³ The officer found a loaded .38 caliber handgun located inside the backpack and found a pill bottle inside the upper left pocket of the jacket. ⁴ An examination of the pill bottle revealed several small packets of a white powder, which later tested positive for cocaine.

The appellant was taken directly to Sumner Regional Medical Center from the scene of the accident. He spent several hours there receiving medical x-rays and treatment. The record reflects that during that time, Officer Evans obtained an arrest warrant for the appellee based upon the evidence of the cocaine and firearm possession. The appellee was released from the medical center that same evening and was taken to the Drug Task Force Center in Sumner County. The record is silent as to what transpired at the Drug Task Force Center. However, the evidence shows that on the following day, the appellee was transported back to Sumner Regional Medical Center after hospital officials notified police that the appellee had a broken neck.

The appellee stayed at Sumner Regional Medical Center for approximately four days. The record reflects that Officer Moniz obtained an arrest warrant for the appellee on October 24, 1995, based upon the charges of evading arrest and reckless endangerment. Officer Moniz testified that the appellee was arrested after his release from the medical center, and was charged with: (1) possession of a controlled substance, to wit: cocaine over 0.5 grams, with intent to sell; (2) possession of a handgun during the commission of a felony; (3) reckless endangerment; and (4) evading arrest.

The appellee filed a motion to suppress the cocaine substance and the handgun on the ground that they were obtained through an improper search and seizure. Following an evidentiary hearing, the trial court granted the motion to suppress finding that the search was without probable cause and did not fall within an exception to the warrant requirement. The trial court determined that there were no grounds for an inventory search since a third party, Jeff Crook, was available to remove the motorcycle from the scene. In addition, the court found that the search was not incident to a lawful arrest because the appellee was not under arrest when the search was conducted.

On interlocutory appeal, the intermediate appellate court affirmed the suppression order. The State of Tennessee appeals to this Court contending that the search was proper as incident to a lawful arrest. The State concedes that the police officers were not entitled to conduct an inventory search. See Drinkard v. State, 584 S.W.2d 650, 653-54 (Tenn.1979). Our inquiry, therefore, is whether the appellee was under arrest when the police officers conducted the search.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

This case involves a review of the trial court's findings of fact and law in granting the motion to suppress. In State v. Odom, 928 S.W.2d 18, 22-23 (Tenn.1996), this Court clarified the standard to be used by appellate courts when reviewing those findings:

Questions of credibility of the witnesses, the weight and value of the evidence, and resolution of conflicts in the evidence are matters entrusted to the trial judge as the trier of fact. The party prevailing in the trial court is entitled to the strongest legitimate view of the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing, including all reasonable and legitimate inferences that may be drawn from that evidence. So long as the greater weight of the evidence supports the trial court's findings, those findings shall be upheld. In other words, a trial court's findings of fact in a suppression hearing will be upheld unless the evidence preponderates otherwise.

Id. at 23. The application of the law to the facts found by the trial court, however, is a question of law which this Court reviews de novo. State v. Yeargan, 958 S.W.2d 626, 629 (Tenn.1997); Odom, 928 S.W.2d at 23. We apply these standards to address the issue in this case. Contrary to the position taken by the dissent, we consider the issue of whether an arrest was made for Fourth Amendment purposes to be one primarily of fact. See Childs v. State, 584 S.W.2d 783, 786-87 (Tenn.1979) (reviewing whether an accused was in custody for purposes of giving the Miranda warnings as primarily a question of fact).

DISCUSSION

The fundamental principle of search and seizure jurisprudence is that the police may not conduct a search unless they first show probable cause and obtain a warrant from a neutral magistrate. ⁵ Under both the federal and state constitutions, "a warrantless search or seizure is presumed unreasonable, and evidence discovered as a result thereof is subject to suppression, unless the State demonstrates that the search or seizure was conducted pursuant to one of the narrowly defined exceptions to the warrant requirement." State v. Bridges, 963 S.W.2d 487, 490 (Tenn.1997).

One exception to the warrant requirement is a contemporaneous police search that follows a lawful arrest. Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 762-63, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2040, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969); State v. Watkins, 827 S.W.2d 293, 295 (Tenn.1992). When police officers make a lawful custodial arrest, they are permitted, as incident to the arrest, to search the person arrested and the immediately surrounding area. Chimel, 395 U.S. at 763, 89 S.Ct. at 2040. The rationale for those searches is the need to disarm the arrestee in order to safely take him into custody, and the need to preserve evidence for later use at trial. United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 234, 94 S.Ct. 467, 476, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973).

In cases where the arrestee is an occupant of a vehicle, police officers may conduct searches, contemporaneous to the arrest, of the passenger compartments inside the vehicle. New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 457, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 2862, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981). Following Belton, this Court has joined several jurisdictions ⁶ in upholding the validity of those searches even where the arrestee is neutralized in the back seat of a police car when the search is conducted. Watkins, 827 S.W.2d at 295-96.

The State contends that the appellee was under arrest at the accident scene and that the search was proper under Belton and Watkins. We need not address whether the search fell within the scope of Belton and Watkins because we affirm the trial court's...